Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

10 years bootstrapped: €6.5M revenue with a team of 13

datocms.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 132 posts

Re: 10 years bootstrapped: €6.5M revenue with a team of 13

#21

Post by embedding-shape »

steffoz wrote: post #16
jacquesm wrote: post #14

That's excellent by any metric. Most larger successful companies have a very hard time consistently breaking the 200K / employee / year turnover level and this is 2.5 times that. On top of that they are indestructible, with that much left on the table a couple of years of solid saving and you can start thinking about much larger projects, and still without outside financing. 10 years is long and if we take the revenu…

Thank you! It was never an all-in bet for us, so we never struggled too much tbh. It slowly grew inside our web agency as a part-time side-quest, and only when we reached an OK level of revenues that could feed our families it became a full-time job and an actual funded company.

That's a really neat and natural approach to build sustainable businesses, thank you for that and extra thanks for publishing something public others can point to as successful examples of that process being implemented in real life.

Re: 10 years bootstrapped: €6.5M revenue with a team of 13

#22

Post by embedding-shape »

kubb wrote: post #18
le-mark wrote: post #15

The website is pretty good. My initial reaction was “A CMS? How can yet another CMS be profitable”. The copy on the homepage explains it pretty well. Congrats on the success.

It’s funny because I have no concept of why this kind of infrastructure is needed and by whom. Replicating this success would be impossible for me because I wouldn’t understand that there are people out there with this need, and how to find them. Not that I need to replicate it. It would be cool to have that cashflow. But the chances of getting it are slim.

> Replicating this success would be impossible for me because I wouldn’t understand that there are people out there with this need, and how to find them.

What is your industry/profession? The best way I've found to find problems worth solving, is working literally anywhere else than "software development shops". Basically any profession/workplace out there is filled with various inefficiencies, but you cannot ask people to point it out themselves, you have to be there and experience it yourself to actually fully understand what the problem is and what a correct/good solution actually looks like. Otherwise you end up with the typical "faster horse" problem-solving.

Once you're there, with the mindset of improving things, you start noticing a ton of areas things could be improved. Then just use your best judgement and start thinking why/how/when.

Re: 10 years bootstrapped: €6.5M revenue with a team of 13

#23

Post by steffoz »

embedding-shape wrote: post #22
kubb wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s funny because I have no concept of why this kind of infrastructure is needed and by whom. Replicating this success would be impossible for me because I wouldn’t understand that there are people out there with this need, and how to find them. Not that I need to replicate it. It would be cool to have that cashflow. But the chances of getting it are slim.

> Replicating this success would be impossible for me because I wouldn’t understand that there are people out there with this need, and how to find them. What is your industry/profession? The best way I've found to find problems worth solving, is working literally anywhere else than "software development shops". Basically any profession/workplace out there is filled with various inefficiencies, but you cannot ask peo…

Totally agree, that's exactly what we did. As a web agency, we tried every CMS out there and struggled with all of them for different reasons (quality, maintenance, pricing, scalability, development speed), so we built our own. The key thing is you need to genuinely identify with the people you're selling to. Without that connection, every doubt (and there will be tons) becomes nearly impossible to overcome.

Re: 10 years bootstrapped: €6.5M revenue with a team of 13

#24

Post by arresin »

steffoz wrote: post #16
jacquesm wrote: post #14

That's excellent by any metric. Most larger successful companies have a very hard time consistently breaking the 200K / employee / year turnover level and this is 2.5 times that. On top of that they are indestructible, with that much left on the table a couple of years of solid saving and you can start thinking about much larger projects, and still without outside financing. 10 years is long and if we take the revenu…

Thank you! It was never an all-in bet for us, so we never struggled too much tbh. It slowly grew inside our web agency as a part-time side-quest, and only when we reached an OK level of revenues that could feed our families it became a full-time job and an actual funded company.

Did you keep a blog during the early days? Wouldn’t mind reading it if so.

Re: 10 years bootstrapped: €6.5M revenue with a team of 13

#25

Post by apocalyptic0n3 »

steffoz wrote: post #23
embedding-shape wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Replicating this success would be impossible for me because I wouldn’t understand that there are people out there with this need, and how to find them. What is your industry/profession? The best way I've found to find problems worth solving, is working literally anywhere else than "software development shops". Basically any profession/workplace out there is filled with various inefficiencies, but you cannot ask peo…

Totally agree, that's exactly what we did. As a web agency, we tried every CMS out there and struggled with all of them for different reasons (quality, maintenance, pricing, scalability, development speed), so we built our own. The key thing is you need to genuinely identify with the people you're selling to. Without that connection, every doubt (and there will be tons) becomes nearly impossible to overcome.

I'd wager that most agency devs have wanted to do this too. CMS's never work the way you want them to as an dev.

Thankfully, the work you have done (along with your competitors) in making headless CMS's viable not just for devs but also for content maintainers has made CMS work far more enjoyable.

It's awesome that you not only built out the dream most agency devs have, but made a successful business out of it at the same time.

Re: 10 years bootstrapped: €6.5M revenue with a team of 13

#26

Post by antonhag »

Congrats! Being able to run a nice company bootstrapped seems amazing.

Turning 10, you might want to stop ditching WordPress for being 15 on your homepage though ;)

   Your customers demand blazing-fast digital products, web standards are evolving at the speed of light, yet you rely on 15-years-old solutions like WordPress that force you to deliver heavy, low-quality user experiences.
After all, you'll be there in only 5 years!

Re: 10 years bootstrapped: €6.5M revenue with a team of 13

#28

Post by sbarre »

steffoz wrote: post #23
embedding-shape wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Replicating this success would be impossible for me because I wouldn’t understand that there are people out there with this need, and how to find them. What is your industry/profession? The best way I've found to find problems worth solving, is working literally anywhere else than "software development shops". Basically any profession/workplace out there is filled with various inefficiencies, but you cannot ask peo…

Totally agree, that's exactly what we did. As a web agency, we tried every CMS out there and struggled with all of them for different reasons (quality, maintenance, pricing, scalability, development speed), so we built our own. The key thing is you need to genuinely identify with the people you're selling to. Without that connection, every doubt (and there will be tons) becomes nearly impossible to overcome.

To be fair, 10 years ago was still a reasonable time to do this (build your own CMS). In the early/mid 2010s the commercial CMS market was dominated by some pretty terrible large enterprise incumbents still stuck in the early 00s.

Would you agree (bias aside, being a CMS provider now) that in 2025 it's probably _less_ advisable to try to build your own bespoke commercial CMS product?

It feels like the CMS market is pretty crowded now, with lots of modern, high-quality open source and commercial products.

Post reply on HN